The Cabrillo National Monument turns 100 Monday, a milestone that will be greeted with — silence.

“It would have been great,” said Laurie Hurl, who had organized one of this weekend’s ill-fated centennial celebrations. “We were going to light up the lighthouse. It would have been so pretty.”

Originally scheduled to start Friday, the four-day centennial party was killed by the federal budget standoff, with some of the revelry rescheduled for next year. For San Diego history fans, this was painful. For students of the monument’s tangled history, though, this debacle almost seems fitting.

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“It’s like there’s a little cloud hanging over the Cabrillo National Monument,” said Iris Engstrand, a University of San Diego history professor. “It’s never been exactly what it should have been.”

Since 1913, this monument has frustrated dreamers who hoped it would be the site of a West Coast Statue of Liberty; stirred arguments between local Portuguese and Spanish communities; and caused a state senator to defy a governor and bend — or did he break? — the law.

All this over a park named for a shadowy figure.

“Cabrillo,” Engstrom said, “has been kind of an enigma in history.”

Dazzling vision

If this 150-acre preserve is doomed to miss its own 100th birthday party, that’s no reflection on its popularity. Every year, 800,000 people visit Point Loma’s southern tip to enjoy the views; admire the 19th-century lighthouse; explore World War II bunkers carved into coastal bluffs; and tour a museum devoted to the mysterious life and career of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. Or was he Joao Rodrigues Cabrilho?

No matter what he was called, this explorer led the first European expedition to land on California’s shores. That occurred on Sept. 28, 1542, historians say, on the shores beneath the monument.

In recognition of this event, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation on Oct. 14, 1913, setting aside a sliver of Fort Rosecrans for Cabrillo National Monument.

The monument was tiny — a half-acre surrounding the lighthouse — but the honor was large. While not as majestic as national parks like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon, national monuments preserve some of the American epic’s most notable chapters. The Statue of Liberty is a national monument; so, too, its neighbor, Ellis Island; and the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.

The new monument benefitted from its dramatic setting, perched above the intersection of the Pacific and San Diego Bay, and its enthusiastic neighbors in Point Loma.

“The Cabrillo National Monument has always played a big part in the Portuguese community,” said John Rebelo, 72, former president of Point Loma’s annual Cabrillo Festival. “It still does.”

Yet the monument’s early years were disappointing. Wilson had asked a civic club, the Order of Panama, to erect a statue in the park. Members agreed, but disbanded before making any progress.

A decade later, the Native Sons of the Golden West shouldered this task, with the same results.

Schemers proposed constructing a 150-foot statue, dazzling landlocked tourists and California-bound mariners alike. Some urged an expedition to find Cabrillo’s remains — legend has them moldering on one of the Channel Islands — and inter them in this behemoth’s base.

Nothing came of this. Worse, by 1926 the monument’s only man-made asset — the lighthouse — had become what National Park Service historian F. Ross Holland called “an eyesore, really.”

Then the Depression hit. In the depths of this economic crisis, the monument’s fortunes turned.

Charting a course

In September 1935, dignitaries drove on a new road through Fort Rosecrans to the monument, where a bronze tablet was affixed to the lighthouse, rebuilt by the Army. The landmark had a new feature, a bronze plaque dedicated by the Portuguese minister to the United States.

The inscription credits the first “Alta California landfall” to “Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, distinguished Portuguese navigator in the service of Spain.”

Lisbon’s contributions to this American monument would continue. In 1939, the Portuguese government commissioned a sculptor to accomplish what the Native Sons of the Golden West and the Order of Panama had failed to do. Alvaro de Bree carved the explorer out of sandstone.

The statue was intended for San Francisco’s 1939-40 exposition, but arrived too late. Stored in a Bay Area garage, the 14-foot, seven-ton sculpture became a massive political football.

Eager to please Oakland’s large Portuguese population, Gov. Culbert Olson promised the carving to that East Bay city.

Ed Fletcher, the state senator representing San Diego, had other plans. “My only thought was to get possession,” he was later quoted, “as that is nine-tenths of the law, so the lawyers say.”

Lawrence Oliveira and other members of San Diego’s Portuguese community used their Northern California contacts to find the crate. Fletcher leaned on the State Park Commission’s president to write to the statue’s guardian, a widow. Confronted with a letter on official stationery, she surrendered the statue to Fletcher.

Then the state senator persuaded “my good friend,” the president of the Santa Fe Railroad, to ship this cargo to San Diego. At no charge.

When the governor denounced this “kidnapping,” Fletcher ignored him. When Bay Area politicians introduced bills demanding the statue’s return, Fletcher’s allies killed these measures in committee.

The statue would be installed at Cabrillo National Monument — and Fletcher would be hailed as a fellow conquistador who charted an unswerving course to San Diego.

“Had it not been for him,” The Evening Tribune lionized Fletcher, “the statue of Cabrillo would still be up by the Golden Gate — which the Portuguese navigator never saw — instead of down by the Silver Gate, into which he sailed in 1542, marking the discovery of California at San Diego.”

Mysterious stranger

The monument was off-limits to the public throughout World War II, when authorities feared that Fort Rosecrans might have to repel an invading Japanese armada.

The Imperial Navy never arrived and, soon after V-J Day, the tourists returned. The postwar era saw the little monument expand from its original half-acre to 150 acres. The parking lot grew, also, and motorists were eventually welcomed by more additions, including a visitors center and auditorium.

Hikers, too, flock here. The monument’s grounds include a scenic trail to Point Loma’s tide pools.

Cabrillo, the monument, has become a popular and well-known destination. Yet Cabrillo, the man, remains a mysterious figure.

He left behind no birth or death certificate. Or portraits. De Bree’s 1939 sculpture, severely eroded, was replaced by a replica in 1988. In both cases, the explorer’s height, weight and general appearance were based on guesswork.

He is believed to have been Portuguese — or Spanish. Depends on who you ask.

“Cabrillo went back to Spain and got married to a Spanish woman,” said Jesus Benayas, president of Casa de España in Balboa Park. “He went back to his roots to Spain, where he was from.”

A 16th-century book, though, describes Cabrillo as the Portuguese commander of a Spanish expedition.

“That was not unusual,” said Rebelo, a leader of San Diego’s Portuguese community. “Columbus (an Italian) sailed for the king of Spain, 40, 50 years before Cabrillo. And, again, there’s no dispute that Magellan was Portuguese even though his voyage was backed by Spain.”

Without documentation, though, Cabrillo’s citizenship is the uncertain focus of what Engstrand calls “a major argument.”

Which makes this centennial’s non-celebration sadly appropriate. After all, the festivities were derailed by a major argument.

Timeline: Cabrillo National Monument

Oct. 14, 1913: On half-acre parcel of Fort Rosecrans, President Woodrow Wilson establishes the monument. Order of Panama, a civic club, asked to erect a statue.

1926: Order of Panama having disbanded, President Calvin Coolidge asks Native Sons of the Golden West to build “suitable monument.”

1933: Park transferred out of War Department and into National Park Service.